


it feels better to let go

by torigates



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/pseuds/torigates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jenna was a little girl she liked to watch horror movies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it feels better to let go

  
When Jenna was a little girl she liked to watch zombie movies. She watched a lot of horror movies, staying up past her bedtime, or sneaking back downstairs when everyone was asleep to watch the late night movies on television after everyone had gone to sleep.

Sometimes—most times—she would get caught. Her mom’s sleepy footsteps would come padding down the stairs, wearing her slippers and the ratty old housecoat she refused to give up, despite the fact that Jenna’s dad had bought her a new one. When her mom caught her, there was no arguing. She would just point, and Jenna would turn off the TV and head up to bed. In the morning her mom would scold her over breakfast.

Occasionally, Miranda was the one to catch her, and Jenna would try to plead her case. Miranda never budged, and Jenna hated that about her, though Miranda hardly ever told on her to mom and dad.

The best was when her dad would catch her. Jenna never heard him coming down the stairs. It didn’t make sense that a man as big as her father could move so quietly. He’d sneak up on Jenna and sit down next to her on the couch, holding out his arm. She settled against his shoulder, and the two of them would sit in front of the television, basked in the blue light until the credits rolled.

She loved scary movies. She loved getting caught up in a world that was so different from her own, being drawn into the fantasy of it all, escaping the humdrum of real life. It was exciting, and thrilling, and Jenna loved it.

 

 

 

++

 

 

 

One year, Jenna and her friends dressed up as the characters from _The Wizard of Oz_ for Halloween.

She wanted to be the Wicked Witch of the West, but her friends made her be the Scarecrow. Jenna cried to her mom for an hour about how unfair it was, and how she would have been the best choice for the evil witch.

Her mom hugged her and patted her on the back. Looking back on the memory, Jenna always thought her mom was trying to contain her laughter, and in hindsight it was pretty funny. At the time, however, she had been devastated.

When things stopped feeling so life or death, her mom took her out shopping and helped her put together an amazing scarecrow costume. Jenna pretended she had been fine with all along, and when October 31st rolled around she and her friends had a great time.

Secretly, she always thought she would have made a better witch.

 

 

 

++

 

 

 

In high school she and Logan would get into incredible screaming matches. She yelled at him to quit treating her like a child, to stop talking down to her. Just because she wasn’t the golden boy he was, didn’t mean she wasn’t as smart as him.

He would roll his eyes and wave his hands and make vague notions to things going on that she couldn’t understand.

Most days, Jenna hated him. She hated him a lot.

It was around that time he would usually push her up against a wall, a rough hand under her shirt, or below the hem of her skirt. Jenna would grit her teeth and try not to moan, she hated the way her traitorous body reacted to him.

They’d fuck in his bedroom, or hers, when the rest of their families weren’t home.

Logan walked her home at night, telling her it wasn’t safe to be alone after dark. She laughed him off. It was Mystic Falls, after all. Nothing bad ever happened. Nothing ever happened.

He pinched his lips into a straight line.

 

 

 

++

 

 

 

On the first Thanksgiving after they were married, Jenna came home to celebrate at Miranda and Grayson’s house.

After dinner, she helped Miranda clean up in the kitchen, watching out of the corner of her eye, the way John and Grayson whispered together in the den.

Miranda bumped her hip against Jenna’s. “It’s not polite to eavesdrop,” she said with a smile.

Jenna shrugged and turned her attention back to her sister. “What are they talking about?” she asked.

Miranda shrugged. “Who knows?” she said. “Boy things.”

She watched the way Grayson’s head bowed close to John’s, the way John whispered furiously in his ear, and knew it was something else. Then Miranda was bringing out the dessert, and the boys stepped back into the kitchen, and she forgot all about.

In the same kitchen, years later, Jenna watched the way Ric talked to Elena, Stefan, and even Jeremy. Something about the way they stood together, private, made Jenna want to march in there and demand they tell her... what, she wasn’t exactly sure.

Teenagers kept a lot of things from their guardians, she told herself. God knew, she had kept more than her fair share of secrets. She didn’t want to pry. If there was something she had to know, she trusted Ric to tell her.

 

 

 

++

 

 

 

When she got the call that Elena needed her, she didn’t hesitate. She grabbed her keys and ran for the door. She didn’t think about the dangers that might be lurking outside, the fabled dangers people had been warning her about her whole life.

The _real_ dangers with which no one had bothered to trust her.

She stepped out into the darkness, and for the first time in her life she was fully aware of her surroundings.

She died.

When she woke up, Elena was crying, she was so thirsty and there were flames all around them. _You should have told me_ , she thought. _All of you should have told me_.

It was too late now. Everything around her was happening too fast, everything was too bright, too loud, things felt too real, and she was so _thirsty_. She needed to drink. She needed to drink something _right now_.

It was all too much.

She stared at Elena as another vampire she had never met drained the life from her body, and refused to give into Elena’s pleas to turn it all off. It was her decision. It was her decision for once and she wasn’t about to give that up in the end.

She wanted to tell Elena she forgave her. She wanted to tell Miranda and John and Ric and everyone, _I forgive you all_ , but she couldn’t.

The flames grew dimmer.


End file.
